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What's a Wreck?

A Cake Wreck is any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate - you name it. A Wreck is not necessarily a poorly-made cake; it's simply one I find funny, for any of a number of reasons. Anyone who has ever smeared frosting on a baked good has made a Wreck at one time or another, so I'm not here to vilify decorators: Cake Wrecks is just about finding the funny in unexpected, sugar-filled places.

It's Memorial Day, and as every red-blooded American knows, there is only one nationally accepted way to demonstrate your sense of patriotic pride in the men and women who have sacrificed for this country. One which involves fire, hunks of raw meat, and at least one guy in a "kiss the chef" apron cursing out the blippitybleepin' starter switch on the filth flarnin' grill.

That's right: It's barbecue time, baby.

Is this creative? Sure. Appetizing? Not so much. It looks like a giant half-cooked hamburger with steak and shishkabab'ed Elmo fingers on it. [shudder] Great, now I gave myself the willies.

[shaking head] Til the end of time, Wreckerators will be trying - and failing - to make circles out of cupcakes. What's the definition of insanity again?

And here's one with the oh-so-authentic chalky briquette look:

Ah, there's nothing like leprous-looking cupcakes to get the ol' saliva glands going!

Some bakeries are breaking down the two main components of the grilling experience. See, while this next one may look like a penned-in bunch of baboon butts, you can tell by the "GRILLIN'" sticker that it's actually a grill:

Shannon S., Amy J., Joanna C., & Nichole H., I'm suddenly inspired to find a doll on a grill, just so I can write the caption "Barbie on the barbie". Unless one of you knows a girl named Barbie? You could even turn the grill off, if you like.

These cakes remind me of the cakes I saw in the grocery store Saturday. While there weren't any grills, there was the hamburger cake, and since I live in Maryland, cakes in the shape of crabs, which were actually kind of cute. There were also cakes shaped like a watermelon with a butterfly on it, but it still looked like Kermit's STD.

Ah, what a shame to reference the Master in the same breath as these wrecks (but somehow fitting, I'd have to admit)

My favorite Wodehouse-ism is a little apt: "He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled. "The Code of the Woosters (1938)

Maybe its just me, but that last one reminds me of the movie Kung Pow, where he punches the giant circular plug of flesh out of one of the bad guys. It looks like someone took a cake pan and pushed it through a cow! I keep thinking "shouldn't there be organs and bone? I mean look at it, its still moving!!" Heheheh

So Jen, let's count: you're into Stargate Atlantis, all things Disney, Eddie Izzard, The Princess Bride, AND PG Wodehouse, and you're hella funny to boot. I am pretty sure you're like my ideal BFF. I mean that's only the short list of things I love that you have recently referenced. way to be awesome!

WOW...icky to the max!!! The baboon butt cake looks like caged moose testicles to me. Or at least the testicles of some humungous animal. Gross.

Ya know, I love BBQ'd steak. Slap a slab of bloody red meat on the grill for me anytime. But the last one had me swallowing hard. Repeatedly. It's quite impressive on some points, really. The wrecker has really pulled off a realistic looking meat cake there. Nice fat marbling, effective steak-shape mimicry, but the thickness proportion is a little off. I personally have never seen a steak that thick. Ever. Even as a roast, it's still massive.

To anonymous who said: "See, it's times like these that I have to wonder who doesn't like cake looking like cake and has to be enticed to eat it by shaping it like something else. I mean, I can understand kids (or adults) not liking a vegetable unless it's hidden in something yummy, but cake? If you can't like cake as is by itself, then, well, I feel sorry for you."

Cake decorating is an art form where cake and icing are the medium. The whole thrill of it all is the theory that you can make ANYTHING out of it and we, as artists, want to see just how far that theory can go. The unfortunate part is that the medium is so readily accessible to the wrong hands. Hence we end up with cake wrecks!

I actually saw a hamburger cake at my local grocery store on Saturday, and I soooo badly wanted to take a picture of it - the bun actually looked moldy! But as fate would have it, it was the first time in weeks that I didn't have my camera with me, and the camera on my cell phone would not have done it justice. It was awful!

I still don't understand cupcake cakes. At all. And people order these specifically? ("I'd like a cake shaped like a trilobite with the inscription 'Dig Here, Dig Now' but make it out of 17 cupcakes.")Too cheap to order a cake that feeds 18? Too lazy to do the math? Scarred by having run out of cake at a previous function and thus resorting to the 1 cupcake per guest rule?

Thanks for dredging up all those miserable, half-buried childhood memories, for I am, alas and alack, Barbie. Have been since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. And since my sister worships your blog, I'm sure she'll snort sweet tea out her nose when she reads this one. 'preciate that. Cheerio.